Game Breaker (Portland Storm Book 14)

by Catherine Gayle

  Nate leaned in, his lips hovering over mine so close I could feel the warmth of his breath. “With your father?”

  My breathing stopped. My heartbeat, too. “Yes.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for anything,” he said. Then he closed the distance between us and kissed me so well I felt it all the way to my tingling toes.

  AS WE LEFT the ice at the at the end of the second period of Game Three—still scoreless—my eyes drifted up into the lower bowl and landed on a sign that was clearly meant for me. No words. Just a crudely drawn monkey and an enormous banana peel.

  The sign disappeared only a moment after I saw it, remaining just long enough for me to register what I was seeing. I swallowed the bile that had gathered in my throat and forced my legs to keep moving until I reached my stall in the locker room.

  I’d barely taken a seat before Archie was on the floor in front of me, trying to get my breezers up enough that he could take a look at my knee.

  “It’s fine,” I said. Which was a lie. My knee wasn’t fine at all, especially not after I’d taken an awkward fall behind the net when I was trying to dig the puck out against two Blackhawks defenders about ten minutes ago. It also appeared that someone involved with the Blackhawks had been watching Eye of the Storm and knew I was playing on an injury. The Storm hadn’t made any sort of announcement to that effect, and we definitely hadn’t stated which knee was the problem. But every time I turned around out there tonight, some guy on the other team was taking a good, solid whack at the injury.

  I’d probably be doing the same thing if the tables were reversed, so I couldn’t blame them. But it wasn’t helping with my pain level, to say the least.

  Archie didn’t listen to me and kept shifting my gear around so he could take a look.

  “Might be quicker and easier for me to strip,” I drawled.

  But too late. He’d reached my knee brace and was poking around in there. “Pretty swollen,” he said. “Doc said we can give you a shot, if you nee—”

  “I don’t need a shot in it.”

  “Well, you’re getting a shit ton of ice on it as soon as this game’s over. And I think I want you to wear a wrap on it all night.”

  “Fine.” I shrugged. Right now, I didn’t care about my knee. All I cared about was getting my head back on straight after what I’d just seen. Plus, I was worried that someone else had seen it. Or that cameras had captured it. If so, all signs pointed to my entire world being about to blow up all around me again.

  He made a few adjustments to my brace before the coaches came into the room, then headed over to Soupy’s stall to perform a similar inspection.

  Bergy took a quick look around, taking stock. We were banged up, but that was nothing new. He’d never been one to give rousing speeches, though, so I doubted that was what he had in store. “This one has the feel of a game that’s either about to get broken wide open or one that’s going to keep going until the wee hours of the morning,” he said. “I, for one, know which I’d prefer. Let’s get back out there and take care of business.”

  Short and sweet, much like I’d been expecting.

  After the coaches went back into Bergy’s office, RJ elbowed me in the ribs. “You okay?”

  “Fine.” Total lie again. But I got the sense he already knew I wasn’t, anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal to lie to him. I shot him a look that I knew he’d be able to interpret without explanation.

  “I saw it,” he said, sending ice through my blood.

  “You think anyone else did?”

  He shrugged. “Not sure.”

  But if RJ had seen it, there was little doubt that plenty of others had, too. In fact, when I glanced up again, it was to see one of Anne’s cameramen focusing in on me.

  Son of a bitch.

  He didn’t say anything else the rest of the intermission. Didn’t need to. I knew he had my back, the same as the rest of my teammates did. I knew that whoever it was out there in the audience with that sign, they weren’t worth my time or energy. Nothing mattered but getting back out there and taking care of business, like Bergy had said.

  Bergy sent me, Koz, and Jo-Jo out to take the first face-off of the third period. I didn’t bother looking up at the crowd. No need to see any more signs like the one I’d already witnessed. It’d only serve to piss me off worse than I already was, and that wouldn’t help me focus on the game. Didn’t need anything to grab my focus.

  Koz won the draw and sent it back to our D. Not wasting any time, I barreled past my guy and headed straight for the blue line. Sure enough, 501 sent a pass straight to the tape on my stick. Jo-Jo was flying down the other wing, making a beeline for Crawford in the Blackhawks’ goal, and I could feel Koz’s presence not far behind me, coming up through the middle.

  Koz and Jo-Jo both had defenders bearing down on them, but I was in the clear. I waited for Jo-Jo to cross in front of the goalie, creating a screen. I faked a pass to Koz, and the D tailing him bit, diving to the ice to prevent it.

  I spotted a hole over the goalie’s stick-side shoulder and took my shot. He just got the butt end of his stick in the way in time, but the puck bounced onto Jo-Jo’s backside and trickled past Crawford into the goal.

  I barely had my hands in the air to celebrate when Thor lifted me off the ice and spun me around, yelling some unintelligible Swedish gibberish in my ear. The rest of the guys on the ice joined in, slapping my ass, my helmet, and every other part of me they could reach.

  Bergy winked at me when we headed back to the bench for a line change. He gave me a good smack on the shoulder once I took a seat next to RJ. “Let’s keep it going, boys,” Bergy called out. “Keep the pressure on them.”

  “Nice one,” RJ said.

  I grinned at him, but then I saw another sign in the crowd over his shoulder. Only two words and a single image from the sign registered before it disappeared: faggots and niggers, and a picture of a gun. Any thought of laughter fizzled away.

  SO MANY REPORTERS had gathered around my stall after the game that I couldn’t take a full breath. They’d left a slight gap between me and them, but there wasn’t any air in the room. It had all been sucked away like a vacuum system was in play. With the masses of lights blinding me, the hordes of cameras and microphones being thrust in my direction, it was all I could do to keep from suffocating beneath the weight of it.

  I glanced around for Anne or any of her camera guys, but I couldn’t find them in the throng. Didn’t mean they weren’t there, though. With the mass of humanity in front of me, my family could have been in there, and I would be none the wiser.

  Kurt Yarbrough stood behind my left shoulder, not that his presence made anything better.

  “Nate!” they were all shouting, spouting off their questions, each trying to have his voice heard above the rest. Finally, only one voice kept going—one of the men in the front.

  “Nate, tell us about the penalty shot. When did you know the puck went in?”

  That was probably the easiest question I’d face all night, and I knew it. “I was just trying to watch Crawford and wait for him to bite first. Everyone talks about his glove side being his weak side, but honestly, he’s worked a lot on that lately. He bought a deke to his glove side, and I got off a backhand shot on the stick side. I didn’t realize it was in until the goal light lit up.”

  I’d barely finished speaking before they were all shouting over each other again. The next question wasn’t anywhere near as safe.

  “Nate, several of the cameras picked up shots of less-than-complimentary signs in the crowd tonight. Did you see any of them?”

  I’d been grinding my teeth together so much for the last couple of hours that my jaw was sore. I forced myself to relax. “I saw some,” I bit off. “Didn’t pay much attention to them. Next question.”

  “Did those signs add any fuel to the fire for you?” another guy asked.

  I leveled him with a stare. “Did they upset you?”

  He stammered for a moment, and Kurt inched f
orward. “Does anyone want to ask Mr. Golston about the game? About his goal and two assists that he scored tonight? Maybe about his thoughts on how the rest of the team played, especially his goaltender, who had a playoff shutout? Those are the things he’s here to talk about tonight.”

  “So he’d rather hide from questions about the racism he’s facing?” some other voice from the crowd put in.

  “I’m not hiding from anything. I’m just focusing on what’s important right here and right now, in this moment.”

  “You don’t think it’s important that two black teenagers got killed yesterday?” another called out.

  “Again, that didn’t have anything to do with me. And frankly, anyone who would go to the trouble to make signs like those just to pull me off my game isn’t important. Not in the least.”

  There was a rumble rolling through the locker room coming from somewhere across from me. I glanced over to see if I could sort out what was going on, and several of the reporters surrounding me followed suit.

  A smaller group of media was huddled around Colesy, but it was his voice that had risen above the hubbub.

  “You all just need to get over it,” he said, almost in a shout.

  Colesy wasn’t a shouter. He wasn’t a fighter. Hotheaded wasn’t a word anyone would ever use to describe the guy, yet right now…that was the shoe that seemed to fit best. If anyone needed Kurt or one of the media guys to rescue him tonight, that was Colesy.

  I glanced back at Kurt, trying to tell him exactly that without using words. He seemed to be of the same mind, trying to shove his way out of my maze so he could get to the other side of the room—but the crowd didn’t give way very easily. He hadn’t made it very far when Colesy responded to another question.

  “No, I don’t give a fuck that one of my teammates is black. I don’t give two shits if they’re brown, yellow, red, orange, or green, either.”

  I couldn’t believe he was using that kind of language in front of reporters. That was completely out of character for Colesy. Kurt was apparently having the same sort of reaction I was, as he pushed harder to dig his way through the sea of people who’d shifted from my stall to Colesy’s.

  “Does it bother you to see signs in the crowd about having people of color on your team? And what about the one that cast aspersions on the character of this organization because of the sexual orientation of David Weber’s son?”

  “I think it says a hell of a lot more about the character of the person who held up the sign than it does about anyone involved with this organization. What does that even mean, doubting the character of the organization because there’s a homosexual in the family? What kind of family would this be if—” He broke off, dragging a towel down his face. “We’re all behind Ghost in this room, and we’re all behind Luke Weber, too. Every last one of us.”

  “What if one of the guys on this team is gay?” someone I couldn’t see asked.

  “Why the hell would I care if a teammate is gay? That’s as stupid as thinking Ghost can’t play because he’s black. Can the guy still play the game? Is he part of this team? Those things are all that matter to me, and I think they’re all that matters to any guy in this locker room.”

  “A lot of players would care—”

  “Who the fuck is this a lot of players you’re talking about? Because that’s news to me. And if anyone on this team has a fucking problem with someone being gay, then they have a problem with me. Because I’m gay. Okay?”

  What? Colesy was gay? Granted, I’d never seen the guy with a girlfriend, but I never would have guessed the reason behind it, either. But like he had already said—it didn’t matter. Because he was Colesy. He was part of this team—this family—and he had been for a long time, and that was that.

  Except, I hated that he was coming out like this. It didn’t feel right to me. Colesy hadn’t said a word to the guys on the team, as far as I knew. That meant there was a reason for keeping his silence. I didn’t know what his reason for secrecy was any more than I knew why he was coming out with it now, but I hated that they’d goaded him into revealing such a personal thing in this way. I wanted to punch someone. Something. Anything.

  The glare on Colesy’s face when he was looking at one of those reporters was unlike anything I’d ever seen from him before in my life. All of the media in front of him started talking at once, trying to force their questions forward as the story suddenly took a shift no one had expected. But he didn’t let them pick up any steam, pushing through before they could ask him anything else. “Yeah, that’s right, I’m gay. Do you have a problem with that? Do you think you’re going to catch it from me? There must be something running rampant in hockey locker rooms lately, now that there’s a whopping two of us who’ve come out. Maybe you should go f—”

  But Kurt reached him and grabbed his arm before he could finish the thought and put his foot in his mouth worse than he already had. “That’s all for today, folks,” Kurt said, much calmer on the exterior than I knew he must be on the inside. “We’re done here.” A few of the reporters tried to stop Kurt, hoping to ask more questions, but he didn’t give them the opportunity. “There will be an official statement from the Portland Storm offices tomorrow, but not before,” he said. Then he dragged Colesy out of the locker room, heading for the coach’s office.

  Colesy caught my eye as they went past. He winked in my direction. Holy shit. I don’t know what sort of reaction I’d been expecting when he went by, but a wink was definitely not it.

  What the hell just happened?

  Several of the media guys still surrounding me started murmuring among themselves, and a couple of them turned around and tried to thrust their mics back in my face.

  I shook my head, having none of it. “You heard Kurt, the same as I did,” I said, shoving past them before any of the others could get any bright ideas about foisting questions about having a gay teammate on me. They’d been after the rest of the guys ever since Luke Weber’s press conference, but so far, they’d left me out of it. There were enough other things to harp on me about, I supposed. But either way, I’d had enough. “That’s all for today. I’m done.”

  Before they could try to get anything else out of me, and particularly before I said something they could take out of context and twist around into another thing entirely, I tugged my jersey over my head, tossed it in the bin in the middle of the room, and followed Kurt and Colesy to Bergy’s office. Webs opened the door when I knocked. He nodded and jerked his head toward the middle of the room to invite me in, closing the door behind me.

  “What the fuck were you thinking?” I demanded as soon as I made sure we were alone—no reporters, not even any of the guys from Anne’s crew.

  Colesy rolled his eyes. “I was thinking I was sick and tired of the way they’re beating you over the head with that shit, so I wanted to give them something else they can flog to death.”

  “But you— You’re not—” I stopped, shaking my head, not even sure what to say to that.

  “Yes, I’m really gay. Not exactly how I intended to come out, but whatever. My family already knows. My father will be furious that this is how the world finds out, but that’s his problem. Hell, he still thinks he should be able to beat the gay out of me or something.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I just couldn’t stand the way they keep digging at you, solely because there are some racist shits in the world.”

  All I could do was stare at him, trying to find a way to turn everything running through my head into words. “You just came out to take the heat off of me?”

  He shrugged. “Something like that. Not a big deal.”

  Big deal didn’t even come close to covering it. No one had ever done anything like that for me before. I didn’t know how I’d ever thank him enough to cover it. I started by doing the only thing that felt right. I crossed over, grabbed his hand, pulled him in for a hug, and slapped him on the back.

  “SORRY I DIDN’T get in there before they shut the door,” Ben said,
packing up his equipment now that the press had left the locker room and we were getting ready to ride the bus back to the hotel with the team. “There were too many people in the way.”

  I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. You got plenty in the locker room, and I’m sure we can get anything else we need over the next few days.”

  To be completely honest, there was a part of me that was glad Nate had those moments alone with Paxton and the coaching staff after what had gone down following the game. I got the sense that they all needed to process it first, before they were ready to comment on it in any way.

  For that matter, I hadn’t fully wrapped my head around everything that had happened tonight. The Storm had won the game, taking a two-to-one lead in the series. But that felt minor in comparison to everything else—the racist and homophobic signs that had kept popping up around the United Center, the way the media had gone on the offensive with Nate, and how Paxton had come out as being gay.

  It didn’t matter how far the world had progressed in terms of acceptance. The truth was, there weren’t many professional athletes who were officially out. For that matter, there were none, until tonight, in the NHL. Luke Weber’s coming out as a gay college athlete last week had been a huge event in the hockey world, but Cole Paxton’s revelation would prove to be the ultimate trump card. Now that he’d made his revelation, the doors would be open for others to come through.

  How soon that would happen remained to be seen—there were still a ton of barriers to be crossed, and I couldn’t imagine it would be an easy decision for many players to make due to locker room culture—but Luke Weber and Cole Paxton had, in the last week, bulldozed a path for others to follow.

  But right now, my concern was for Nate. Our cameras had landed on at least four different racist signs in the arena, and I knew he’d seen some of them, as well. Add that to the way the media hadn’t been able to let the story go after the more recent events, and I wasn’t sure where his head was.

  I sent my guys out to load their equipment on the truck, since I’d made the executive decision not to film any more tonight, then made my way out to the bus. Nate was already there, with a book in his hands and an empty seat next to him. It was a regular paperback this time, not one of his textbooks, and he was holding it open in such a way that he wasn’t creasing the spine.